Do you want your Internet service provider to operate like the water company or the electric company? Internet access services will be more like these leaden public utilities if the Federal Communications Commission tries one of the more likely workarounds to a D.C. Circuit Court decision today that restricts its authority to regulate.

Walburg, however, never sent any unsolicited faxes; he was sued under the regulation by a class of plaintiffs for failing to include opt-out language in faxes sent to those who expressly authorized Walburg to send them the faxes.

I’m perplexed by the challenge of referring neutrally to legislation moving through Congress dealing with whether or not the government should regulate Internet service. Work with me as I untangle the Standard Federal Obfuscation™ involved here.

It might be tempting to laugh at France’s ban on words like “Facebook” and Twitter” in the media. France’s Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel recently ruled that specific references to these sites (in stories not about them) would violate a 1992 law banning “secret” advertising.

Randy May of the Free State Foundation has a characteristically good post about the AT&T/T-Mobile merger entitled: “The AT&T and T-Mobile Merger: Thinking Things Through.” Among other smart ideas, Randy highlights the competitive game-playing that goes on in the merger review arena:

Matt Yglesias takes my recent post gathering three links a little too seriously. Beyond their subject matter—the proposed merger of AT&T and T-Mobile—the theme running through the links was that they were all to the TechLiberationFront blog, not that “the federal government should not try to manage the development of the communications marketplace.” My humor is a little odd. Not everyone gets to come along….

Is there something special about December? Perhaps it’s the spirit of giving that had the Federal Communications Commission voting yesterday to regulate Internet service. At the beginning of the month—December 1st—the Federal Trade Commission issued a report signaling its willingness to regulate online businesses.